Manumission, 2004

Antonio Carreño's paintings burst with abstract vitality. His gracious but dramatic embrace of a style once considered radical and even offensive illustrates how well this kind of image making can continue. Antonio works in the tradition of a canon created by Paul Klee, Yves Tanguy, Hans Hoffman, Philip Guston, and such kindred Spanish painters as Juan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, to name a few. In addition, Antonio’s overriding sense of color and content has a surrealist tone while also recalling the light-filled paintings of Matisse.

With a rigorous academic background gained in his six-year program at the National Schools of Fine Arts, Santo Domingo in his native Dominican Republic and the Arts Student League, Antonio was attracted to abstraction for the freedom it offered him. In this mode, he found he could let his conscious thoughts engage formal artistic qualities of color, line and structure while his subconscious often took an unpredictable course.

It is always interesting to see where an artist produces his or her art. The physical context of creativity can be informing. While paintings, prints, sculpture and photographs hold their own in various surroundings over time, their place of origin offers revealing insights. A look at Venetian clouds tells us about Tintoretto’s skies; seeing Holland’s low terrain gives us an understanding of Rembrandt’s landscape etchings; standing on the rocky coast of Maine can bring us closer to Winslow Homer.

At first, one might not think of Antonio’s paintings as being inspired by nature, but the artist prefers to paint outdoors. When weather prohibits this, his studio’s large windows offer an immediate proximity to the woods around his home. It is amusing to apply the Barbizon School’s once revolutionary practice of plein-air painting to contemporary abstract painting. In Antonio’s case, it is a perfect fit.

Antonio’s house is in a rural setting outside of Newton, NJ. Located in the northwestern part of the state, it belies stereotypes of a congested, industrial, paved-over metropolitan suburb. The artist states that many of the quick-drawn elements in his pictures come from nature. In these graphic notations we may see part of a tree, a leaf, and clouds. Such representational components appear to have been abstracted, and many are now part of Antonio’s personal calligraphy.

Antonio lays his canvases or board-backed paper on a flat surface that becomes a painting table. He thus has 360-degree access to the picture surface and can move around it as his paintings grow. First, he applies a ground of polymer and sand. This provides a very shallow relief map upon which he proceeds to apply colors and drawing. If the polymer and sand are still wet, the application of paint is akin to fresco painting. Antonio is a traditionalist in many ways.

Preferring to work fast, Antonio feels his best paintings are done quickly. Fuss over a picture too much and it looses its vitality. However, determining the final touches of a work can take time and the artist often has a stack of paintings nearing completion. These he will return to as he lets the intuitive give way to the calculated.

As with all artistic forms of expression, we look for analogies as we decipher Antonio’s paintings. For me, his work holds references to the Color-Field abstraction of the early 1970s and Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s. He usually builds his colors from the painting’s base and we see them lightening as they rise. Yellow is particularly consuming for the artist. This often-challenging hue is handled with dexterity and comfort.

The drawing we see in Antonio’s paintings has evolved into a personal form of graphic expression. Gestures, lines, soft loops, and gentle slashes dance around in and out of the painted surfaces with a delightful assurance and bravado.

When an artist decides to give his paintings a literal as well as an optical physicality, the results can be compelling or detracting. Some artists have effectively made the tangible presence of paint and other materials an obvious component of their work. Others have not been so successful. Indeed, when the third dimension is apparent on a painting and it is done for cute effect or slick trickery, it fails miserably. Happily, Antonio’s use of polymer mixed with sand as a painting surface is so clearly a part of his art and so quietly unobtrusive that it works. In fact, viewers are not immediately aware of the surface the artist has built.

The paintings of Antonio Carreño, layered with bold color and playful drawing built upon their manipulated low-relief surfaces, are at once obvious and mysterious. His paintings easily register at a quick glance. But, they are most appreciated with protracted consideration. For me, the more I look at them, the more they tell me.

New Jersey has clearly become the most creative state in the nation. One reason for this is the proliferation of artists, writers, musicians, performers, and other creative people of diverse backgrounds who call the state home. Antonio Carreño is a perfect example. With his strong Dominican Republic heritage, the artist is a leading contributor to New Jersey’s rich Transcultural present and future.

Steven H. Miller, Executive Director,
Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ